Monday 13 July 2009 10.45 EDT
First published on Monday 13 July 2009 10.45 EDT

There's nothing more depressing than a game that sells well on the back of its subject matter rather than any intrinsic merit, and the first four Harry Potter games fell squarely into that category. But Electronic Arts, to a large extent, has finally cracked it with Half-Blood Prince. At least on the Wii and DS, which are bound to be the biggest-selling versions.

At last, EA has worked out how to replicate the fun of spell-casting and potion-making using the Wii Remote and clever gestures with the DS's stylus; the whole process makes much less sense when using a gamepad studded with buttons, though, even though the next-gen versions have significantly better graphics. Previous Harry Potter games simply weren't much fun to play – they concentrated too hard on exploring virtual recreations of Hogwarts at the expense of everything else. In Half-Blood Prince, there's still plenty of exploration to be done, but at least you can summon Nearly Headless Nick to show you where to go.

Essentially, gameplay involves tramping around Hogwarts and its grounds, performing mini-missions, the vast majority of which involve duelling with your wand, making potions or playing Quidditch. The first two pastimes are great fun but, sadly, the Quidditch is a bit lame – it has been dumbed down to precision-flying through a course delineated by stars (rather like Sega's game NiGHTS). Which is fairly plausible in the context of playing a Seeker following a Snitch, but still rather lame.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Photograph: PR

Potion-making involves all manner of gestures when, say, picking up potions and pouring them, or heating your cauldron, while duelling is great, employing both Wii Remote and Nunchuk as you launch different spells and defences. Storyline-wise, Half-Blood Prince restricts itself to the book's key moments so would seem rather disjointed if you hadn't read the book. But then, who hasn't?

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Photograph: PR

Overall, this is the first HP game to even get near to living up to the quality of JK Rowling's books and the accompanying films. It's good enough that adults will enjoy playing it with their offspring and may, indeed, find themselves sneaking back to it when the kids are sleeping. It won't go down as a great paragon of game design, but it does the trick perfectly adequately.